The Rev. Canon John Bedingfield's sermon for January 31, 2021

In the name of One God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

In Harper Lee’s wonderful book, and almost equally wonderful movie, To Kill A Mockingbird, Atticus Finch is an authority figure.  He is a lawyer in the poor, small town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Great Depression.  Atticus is one of the pillars of the town and someone whom the townspeople, by-and-large know and trust.  In other words, when Atticus Finch speaks – whether they agree with him or not – people listen.  And the first part of the story deals heavily with establishing Atticus’ level of authority, both at home and in the town.

Twice in only seven verses, the author of Mark’s Gospel tells us that the people were astounded and amazed that Jesus taught and acted, “with authority.”  Clearly for Mark, Jesus’ authority was an important thing, and one that the congregation members in today’s Gospel story had never seen until that day.

The people in the synagogue at Capernaum that day had no idea who Jesus was.  Mark tells us in previous verses that Jesus had just begun His ministry by choosing His first four disciples, who lived in Capernaum.  Jesus wasn’t a local boy.  He had just gotten to town from Nazareth.  So, when he began to teach that day, he came to the people as an unknown quantity.  But as soon as He started to teach, they “were amazed.”  Jesus taught them “as one having authority, and not as the scribes.”  That was a real difference for the people, even though the scribes were the men who had been trained in the Scriptures and were given the job of teaching them about their faith.  Mark wants us to understand that Jesus’ teaching was a new experience for a people who had been previously taught by trained experts.

In my days in the courtroom, I saw some of the best, and some of the worst trial lawyers in Texas.  I sat across from some very good ones and some very bad ones, but I also spent countless hours in the gallery – the place where “the audience” sits – waiting for my turn to go before some judge.  Through those experiences, I learned that there are very real differences between lawyers.  Some will out work and out prepare their opponents every time.  Others will never be prepared, no matter how much time they have or how important the matter they’re handling.  But there are also some (a small number to be sure) who have a God-given gift when they step inside the bar.  They do their jobs with authority and with authenticity.  And it makes a difference.

If you’ve ever been into a real courtroom, you may have seen these same things.  One lawyer gets up before the judge or jury and has a whole stack of papers and file folders.  Methodically, he or she goes through each one, asking good questions or making good arguments, in a very measured and careful way.  And inevitably you’ll find yourself falling asleep, halfway through their presentation.  Then the other lawyer gets a turn.  This person begins to speak, either with few – or no notes, and you find yourself riveted; captivated by every syllable, waiting to find out what is coming next.  One of the main differences between these two is that one presents the case with authority and one does not.  One knows which files to reach for in order to find the pertinent fact, the other knows, and has lived, the case.

The Scribes knew what the Scriptures said.  They knew where to find every law in Leviticus and Deuteronomy.  They knew where to look to find what the prophet Isaiah had said.  But Jesus knew the God from whom all the Scriptures had come.  “The Law,” of Scripture was written on His heart and the Prophets spoke words that Jesus didn’t have to look up, He knew the God who had spoken the words to them.  The Scribes taught the Hebrew Scriptures, Jesus was the Scriptures.

People were – and are – drawn to Jesus, not because of the miracles He produced.  Sure, the miracles made people gasp and show their awe, but in the long run, the miracles were signs, not events.  They were signs of who Jesus was, signs of where His authority came from, signs that the things He taught, said and did were true – were authentic.

One hundred and forty-odd years ago, the Bishop of Rhode Island, Thomas March Clark wrote a book entitled Primary Truths of Religion.  In it, Bishop Clark wrote this about Jesus:

The great evidence of Christianity is Christ.  And He authenticates Himself.  The most natural solution of His life is the supernatural.  The truths which He uttered were not truths which He had learned; He was the truth.  The works, the wonders and signs, that He performed, were the natural development of His superhuman power.

Thomas March Clark expressed the amazing power of Jesus that the people of Capernaum saw – Jesus’ supernatural authority; that which drew people to him as if by magic so that they could experience who God really is, just by being around Him.  

Here is where Atticus really distinguished himself from even the most gifted and authoritative of lawyers.  Not only was Atticus an authority figure around town, but when Tom Robinson was being unjustly charged with rape, Atticus got down into the middle of the racially heated situation and faced danger with him.  And probably more importantly, when Jem was injured in Bob Ewell’s attack, Atticus stayed up all night, sitting by the boy’s bed, looking after and caring for him.  He did not send anyone else to be a caregiver, he got into the middle of the suffering and helped to bring healing.

Atticus is a Christ figure in To Kill A Mockingbird. And this is one of the areas where that fact shines through brilliantly.  You see, Jesus did not just authoritatively teach the people about Holy Scripture or what God had said and done in the past.  When the man with the unclean spirit came in, Jesus left his teaching and went to interact with the man … He got down into the man’s misery with him.  And in the process, Jesus brought the man healing and wholeness.  Jesus – whom Mark has introduced as none other than “Messiah” and “Son of God” – is also one who confronts and responds to human suffering and need.  Even though Jesus has an exalted title, he wades into human misery.

We are naturally drawn to people who speak, “as one with authority,” because they have an authenticity that makes us believe that we can trust what they say.  That authenticity comes from “living” what we are talking about.  In other words, if I stand here and talk to you about the art of hunting deer or catching fish, you’ll likely tune me out, even if you really care about the subject matter, because you will be able to tell that what I’m telling you came out of a book, or from someone else’s experience.  It won’t authentically be my story.  But when I stand here and tell you about the power of Christ Jesus, resurrected and living in the world; hopefully you will hear authenticity in my telling.

I have read a lot about our Lord – his life, his teachings, his ministry.  And I can tell you lots of Jesus stories.  But what might move you is when I tell you how Jesus has moved in MY life.  That is an authentic experience of the one who taught with authority.  We all have those stories, the stories of everyday miracles that can only happen through the living God.  

Have you ever had something that happened in your life that was just beyond your life experience?  Something that was simply unexplainable?  Perhaps a lost pet – or friend – just suddenly returned.  Or maybe a tumor “disappeared,” between doctor visits.  Maybe it was something as ordinary as a relationship being healed after a long time of estrangement.  Each one of those things can be brushed aside as, “just one of those things,” or a coincidence, or “good luck.”  But if you believe that God created everything that is, and that God is active in the world, those would be everyday miracles.  And I will guarantee that if you tell someone your story, and include how you felt when God acted in your life – that will be an authentic explanation of God.

Now share your authentic stories of God.  That’s how we deepen community, and how we create new disciples for our Lord.  

In the name of one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.

[Epiphany 4B Sermon 013121, Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Psalm 111, 1 Corinthians 8:1-13; Mark 1:21-28] 

The Rev. Canon John Bedingfield's sermon for January 24, 2021

The Old Testament reading this morning comes from Jonah.  We all “know” about Jonah, right?  I say, “Jonah” you say, “Whale.”  Everyone who was raised in any biblical tradition was taught as a child, the story of Jonah.  But, do you know how Jonah ended up in the belly of the great fish?  Or what happened after he got out?

Jonah lived in ancient Israel, probably sometime around the 8th century BCE, so almost 3000 years ago.  One day God called on Jonah and told him to go to Nineveh, one of the principle cities of Assyria, a very powerful enemy of Israel’s in what is today Iraq.  Now God told this ordinary guy to go to one of his nation’s enemies and preach repentance to them.  How do you suppose Jonah responded to this call from God, “out of the blue?”  Right.  Jonah said, “No way!”

Not only did Jonah refuse to go to Nineveh, but he got on a boat headed in the opposite direction, to Tarshish, or modern-day Turkey.  God gave Jonah a difficult and potentially dangerous job to do, and Jonah went 180 degrees in the wrong direction.  While Jonah was sailing toward Turkey, a terrible storm blew up on the Mediterranean Sea.  As all of the sailors worked to try to keep the ship afloat during the storm, they were calling out to each other – “Pray to your gods!”  Each one prayed to whatever god he worshipped and the storm continued to get worse.  So the sailors went below and woke Jonah up – he was sleeping through the storm – and they said, “Where are you from and who is your god?  Pray to that god to save our lives.”  Jonah told them that he was an Israelite and that his god was the God of all creation.  And he told them that he was running away from God.  Then Jonah volunteered for the men to throw him overboard because then God wouldn’t want to stop them, once Jonah was off the ship.  Ultimately, they did as Jonah suggested and the storm stopped.  Then Jonah was swallowed up by the big fish.  And guess what?  After three days in the fish’s belly, Jonah repented and apologized to God for running away.  Then the big fish spit Jonah out, right on the shore of Nineveh – where God had called him to go in the first place.

So, in this morning’s reading from chapter 3, we heard Jonah doing what he had been called to do, preach repentance to the people of Nineveh.  And it worked.  Chapter 3 tells us that Jonah’s preaching made the people repent, all the way up to the king of Nineveh, who called on the whole kingdom to change its ways.  And then Jonah rejoiced in the Lord, right?  No.  Then we find out that Jonah was angry with God, because God chose to spare Nineveh after everyone repented.  Jonah didn’t want his preaching to be the successful end to things, he wanted to preach repentance and then watch as God carried out a fiery judgment against the city.  So the book of Jonah ends with God explaining God’s penchant for mercy, while Jonah sulks.

Jonah was called by God to do something that he really did not want to do.  He refused.  Then God made things miserable for him.  In his misery, he repented and did what he was called to do.  Then God made the way clear and Jonah succeeded in the mission to which he had been called.  That story, as they say in priestly circles, will preach.

As I’ve told you in recent weeks, we are all called by God.  How things turn out is a matter of hearing that call and then responding to it, positively or negatively.  When we ignore God — or worse yet, say, “no” — life tends to be difficult.  But when we say yes — either reluctantly, as Jonah did, or easily, as did Simon, Andrew, James, and John — things seem to work out.  Saying yes does not mean that we will have no more problems, it just means that God’s mission will be furthered in the world.  And we will be a part of it, with God’s help.

Seminary professor, Will Willimon told a story about a student he had who, like me, was a “second career” student.  She had been a social worker for years before hearing a call to ordained ministry.  He said that she was terribly disorganized and never was able to turn in her work on time.  At the end of one particular semester, Dr. Willimon had warned all of his students that the final assignment had to be turned in on time, or there would be dire consequences.  As usual, the problem student did not have her work completed.  She told the professor, “I really would love to have gotten this done on time, but there were several other classes that required so much work.  I just couldn’t finish yours on time.”  Willimon had finally had enough and he exploded!  “You have got to do something about your inability to be on time.  What is going to happen when you’re in a church and you step into the pulpit on Sunday and say, ‘I really would love to have gotten a sermon written for today, but what with everything else going on, I just couldn’t.’”?  He said that she immediately yelled back at him, “Back off!  Do you think that I like things being this way?  I’m not here because I’m the world’s best student.  I’m not here because I’m well organized.  I’m here because this is where Jesus called me to be!  It was not my first choice to go to seminary, Jesus called.  So if you have a problem with my being here, take it up with Jesus, not me!”

Have you ever been called to do something that you absolutely did not want to do?  When I first heard the call to ordained ministry, I did everything I could to avoid it.  I was only three years out of law school and it was definitely not the time to go back to school.  So, to try to push the call aside, I signed up for every ministry I could in our large church, trying to satisfy a general call to serve.  But my sense of call just got stronger, as I got busier and busier.  Finally, there was something called Stephen Ministry, in which one goes through pretty extensive training and then is paired with someone who needs one-on-one spiritual care.  I was convinced that this ministry would do it, once and for all.  I wanted no part of personal, one-to-one, intimate ministry.  So I signed up for this thing that I definitely did not want.  And as always happens when one finally follows a call from God, I was blessed by Stephen Ministry in ways that I never could have imagined.  And becoming a Stephen Minister gave me the impetus to stop running from the call to ordination.

What are you being called to?  What is Christ Church being called to?  To the work of Jesus.  And the work of Jesus is love.  Love of all sorts and conditions of humans.  Feeding them, clothing them, comforting them.  Doing all that we can to meet their physical as well as their spiritual needs.  Not judging them, or treating them as somehow deficient because they need help.  Instead, as our baptismal covenant says, striving for justice and peace, and respecting their dignity.  That is the work of Jesus.  We are all called to do it in every way we can.

We can run from God’s call.  We can try to “fake God out,” by doing something else, like Jonah.  Or, also like Jonah, we can just say, “I refuse.”  But if we choose that course of action, we will have a hard time.  We will struggle, almost like we are pushing a boulder up hill.  But when we emulate those first disciples of Jesus and simply leave whatever we are doing to follow the call, Jesus will bless our work and will make us a part of the miraculous wonders being done by the God of all creation.

In the name of the God of love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

[Epiphany 3B Sermon 012421, Jonah 3:1-5, 10; Psalm 62:6-14, 1 Cor. 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20]

The Rev. Canon John Bedingfield's sermon for January 17, 2021

It has happened to almost all parents at one time or another.  You wake up out of a “sound” sleep, to a baby crying, or a young child calling your name.  You groggily get out of bed and rush into the other room, only to find the child fast asleep.  Either your baby was crying or calling out while asleep, or you dreamed that you heard the call.  That must have been what it felt like for Samuel in this morning’s Old Testament reading.  But what Samuel heard was neither Eli sleep-talking nor a dream.  Samuel heard the very real voice of God, calling him to something new, exciting and scary.

In the story of this call from God to a young boy, we hear an interesting tale.  You see, Samuel lived his entire life up to that point with Eli, the Chief Priest of the Temple at Shiloh.  Samuel’s mother, Hannah was unable to have children.  Her husband Elkanah’s other wife had numerous children.  And she incessantly made fun of Hannah.  So, one year when Elkanah and his family made their yearly pilgrimage to the Temple at Shiloh, Hannah prayed with great emotion and fervor for God to give her a baby boy.  Eli, the old priest saw her and tried to kick her out of the Temple because, in her rocking and wordlessly moving her mouth while praying, he thought she was drunk.  She assured him that she was sober, just emotionally torn up.  Hannah told Eli about her prayer and her promise to dedicate her son to God’s service; and the old priest told her that God would grant her prayer.  That is exactly what happened and Samuel was born.  And unlike many people who make promises to God under duress and then forget the promises, Hannah kept her word God and dedicated Samuel to serving God.  So as soon as he was weaned, baby Samuel went to live in the Temple.

We take up the story this morning when Eli was old and almost completely blind.  Samuel had lived with him as a son, and that is important to the story because Eli had two biological sons, Hophni and Phinehas.  These two were priests of the Temple under their father and they turned out to be perhaps the worst priests ever.  Anything the people brought to the Temple as an offering to God, Hophni and Phineas would steal for themselves.  They also had inappropriate relationships with some of the women in their congregation.  In other words, Eli’s sons used their positions of trust to increase their wealth and to get what they wanted.  And maybe just as bad, Eli did nothing to stop Hophni or Phinehas from their sinful ways.

With all of that as background, the story begins with Samuel sleeping in the room with the Ark of the Covenant – a sign to the readers that God was physically present in the room.  The author of 1 Samuel tells us that Samuel didn’t yet know God – he had not yet spoken with God.  Then there was that strange night ….

Samuel awoke to hear someone calling his name.  “Samuel!  Samuel!”  The young boy got up from his bed and went in to see what Eli wanted.  When Samuel said to Eli, “Here I am, for you called me,” Eli groggily responded, “I did not call you, my son.  Go lie back down.”  It reminds me of the sleeping aid commercial a few years ago, where the man has insomnia.  He tosses and turns and finally turns on the light.  His wife is lying next to him, asleep and he whispers, “Honey.  Honey, are you awake?”  She opens her eyes and in an exasperated tone says, “I am now!”  That’s the way I imagine Eli would have been the first – and especially the second time Samuel woke him.  “Eli, Eli, are you awake?”  “I AM NOW!  Go back to bed, kid!”

But the third time that Samuel went in to see if his defacto father had called him, even the blind old priest finally saw what was going on.  Eli, the priest who was so blind that he didn’t recognize that Hannah was praying rather than drunkenly ranting; Eli, the priest who was so blind that he couldn’t see what his own sons were doing to the people of God; the priest who was so blind that, once he learned how his sons were stealing from God, could not see a way to stop them; this same Eli finally had vision enough to recognize God’s call to Samuel.  Eli is proof positive that God can use any of us to do a good thing.

Eli told Samuel to answer God and to listen to what God had to say to him.  And Samuel did.  That night, a young boy became a prophet for God.  Samuel became one who listened to God and then warned people about what God had told him.  On this first occasion of Samuel hearing God’s call, it must have been very exciting for him, but also very scary.  You see, God told Samuel that God was going to cut off Eli and his household from the family of God; that because of the evil and blasphemous actions of Eli’s sons, and because Eli had not stopped them.  Nothing would be able to bring reconciliation between God and Eli again.  And Samuel had to lie back down and consider all of that until the morning, when Eli asked what happened.  Samuel then had to accurately relay all of the horrible news he had been given by God, to the only father he had ever known.

That’s the thing about calls from God.  They rarely come when or how we expect them; even less often if we try to make them happen.  God calls us in all kinds of ways, at all kinds of times – but it is always on God’s time, not ours.  And the other thing about calls from God is that they don’t necessarily tell us what we want to hear.  Instead, they tell us what we need to hear.  

God calls us because God has a job or a message that is particularly suited to us and our abilities (even when we don’t recognize those abilities in ourselves).  God calls when God knows that we are ready – even if we have no idea that we are.  And God calls with instructions that may seem counter-intuitive, if not downright ridiculous to us.  But if we test those calls against someone like Eli; and if we faithfully listen and answer God’s call, the result will always be the same – a vision of something amazing.

In this morning’s Gospel, after Jesus calls Nathanial, Jesus tells him something that we would do well to remember.  “‘You will see greater things than these.’  …  ‘Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’”  In other words, Jesus was saying, don’t be blown away by the simple things like the ability to see you when I was not physically with you; don’t think that it is spectacular that God knows where you are and what you are doing; rather, if you listen for, and answer God’s call – becoming a faithful disciple, you’ll be truly amazed by the wonders that God does, in your life and the lives of those around you.  

Last week I talked about the fact that we are all children of God, adopted into the household of God through our baptism by water and the spirit.  If that is true – that we are all children of the same God, inheritors of the Kingdom – then we all have the same rights, duties and responsibilities as did Jesus and the early Disciples.  It is our duty to listen for God’s call and to respond faithfully – even when the call is for something scary, like telling your father that God is no longer with him (like Samuel); or serving God in a brand new way, as Nathaniel did.  

The same God who the Psalmist says numbered the hairs on our heads, and who mysteriously knit us together in our mothers’ wombs knows our hearts and our minds.  That God will not let us go off in the wrong direction if we are listening and trying to be faithful.  Each of us will be given our own Eli – a “sometimes blind” old priest, or someone else with more battle scars than we have – to advise us on our call.  We are all called.  Our job is to listen, and to check to ensure that the call came from God, rather than a dream, and then to move to faithfully answer the call … whatever it is.  

In the name of one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

[Epiphany 2B Sermon 011721, 1 Samuel 3:1-10(11-20); Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17, 1 Corinthians 6:12-20; John 1:43-51]

Christ Episcopal, Saint Joseph, annual meeting: January 24,2021

        Our Senior Warden, Mr. H. T. Goldman, has set our annual meeting for January 24, 2021 immediately following the 10am service.

The Rev. Canon John Bedingfield's sermon for January 10, 2021

In the season of Epiphany, the lectionary readings are designed to give us some “epiphanies” about who Jesus is.  Today, we get a view of the human Jesus, beginning his earthly ministry, being baptized by his cousin John.  So today is a good day to consider what it means to be baptized, and what it means for us that we ARE baptized.  

When you think of baptism, what do you picture in your mind’s eye?  For those of us who have witnessed more than few baptisms in the Episcopal Church, what may immediately jump to mind is: a group of happy adults, self-consciously standing in front of the congregation with a baby dressed in either an heirloom white christening gown or one that will never be worn again.  And after the baby is baptized and sealed by the Holy Spirit, the congregation welcomes the baby into the household of God.  Then there is applause and everyone sits down and we go back to our “regular” worship.  But if you come from another Protestant tradition, you may envision people lining a river bank and singing as the preacher wades out into the water, where adults come out, one-by-one, to be dunked under the water and then join in the singing on shore.

You all know that I love movies.  There is one movie image that always comes to my mind when I think of baptism.  In The Shawshank Redemption, (which it seems that the TBS network runs at least once a day), Tim Robbins plays Andy Dufresne, a wrongly-convicted prisoner, serving a life sentence in a particularly brutal institution.  As one Christian writer put it, “He is assigned to assist the church-going, hymn-whistling, Bible-quoting warden who is also a vicious, vengeful megalomaniac embezzling millions of dollars from the state.”

During his cruel, dangerous and seemingly hopeless incarceration, Andy patiently works on an escape plan.  For years he tediously works to make a hole in the wall of his cell (and keep it covered) as he works out every detail of his escape.  The night he breaks out there is a terrible electrical storm.  As the thunder crashes Andy pounds through a sewer pipe behind the wall of his cell.  He makes his way into the sewer pipe and out of the prison, getting to a nearby river, stopping frequently to be sick.  Finally he emerges from the pipe and collapses in the water.  In this wonderful scene, he struggles to his feet, and in the torrential downpour, as lightning flashing around him, he pulls off his prison uniform and is washed clean by the rain.  

So why would that particular scene jump to mind when I think of baptism?

There are two elements that are burned into my mind from this portrayal of baptism.  The first is that Andy Dufresne emerged from that sewer pipe, covered from head to toe in filth and muck; and covered on the inside with mental and emotional corruption and sludge from his time in a horrible place.  But when he makes his way through all of that and gets to the other side, God’s renewing rain, literally water from heaven, washes everything away and gives him a brand-new start.  The water allows him to begin again, as someone reborn.

I would suggest to you that that is analogous to what happened on that day at the Jordan river when John baptized Jesus.  Jesus came into the world to save us from sin; to be our redeemer – the one who sacrifices something valuable in order to give us a new future.  Think about it this way: this young carpenter from Nazareth who is also the Incarnation of God, made His way to the Jordan that day, covered with the sins of all humanity.  From head to toe, He was covered in every imaginable vile and contemptible thing ever thought or done by any person.  But as John covered him with the waters of baptism, all of that was washed away.  Jesus did not need to be baptized for his own sins … any more than infants need to be baptized to wash away their own sins.  Jesus was baptized in order to wash away ALL of the sin in the entire world.  And when Jesus came out of the waters of baptism and reached the other side, He was not born again … the WORLD was born again.

When we recreate Jesus’ baptismal event, we are remembering what He did for us, while we also take part in the rebirth of creation … being reborn ourselves, in the power of the Spirit.  But there is another aspect of all of this that is also important for us.

When Jesus stood up after being baptized, Mark tells us, “he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.  And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’”  In other words, when Jesus came out of the baptismal waters, there was an instant of “What now?” followed by God’s direction to Him to go out into the world as “the beloved,” the one who would show God’s gracious and abundant good pleasure to the world.

When Andy Dufresne was washed clean in his own waters of baptism, there was the same instant of looking heavenward and silently wondering “What now?”  Then Andy’s impeccable plan came back to mind and he began life again, as a new person with a new destination and a new mission.  That’s where we come in on this Sunday of baptismal reminders.

Christ Church is truly at a “What now?” point in its history, as are most other churches that are trying to survive a pandemic along with economic and civil turmoil.  As the household of faith – a community of beloved and redeemed children of God – we are at a place in which we should look at how we give of ourselves in this community and the wider world.  The “What now?” for us is: how do we reflect our redeemed and beloved nature to the community around us?  Or put another way, now that we have been baptized into the household of God, and become (as St. Paul put it) the adopted children of the loving God, how should we live our lives?

All around us in this country today, we see, hear, and feel hatred.  If not outright hatred, then at least a sense that no one really cares about anyone else anymore.  The news shows nothing but people sick and dying, and our fellow citizens who make it plain that the lives of other children of God amount to nothing, if it means that I don’t get my way.  Make no mistake here, this is not a political rant.  I don’t do that from the pulpit.  This is a lamentation about the state of Christianity in America today.

It seems to me that there is a paucity of people who even give lip-service to the message of the Gospel of Jesus.  Those who do publicly speak about Jesus’ message seem to consistently get it wrong.  You see, Jesus did not come to the earth in order to teach us to judge each other.  Nor did he preach a message of vengeance, violence, cruelty, or comparisons in which we put ourselves above others.  Anyone who tells you any of that, is preaching their own gospel, not the one of Jesus Christ.  

If you want to boil the Gospel down into something that you could write on a Post-it note, it is this: Because of Jesus we have been redeemed and forgiven, given a new life in which love for God and each other is our only mission.  As our Presiding Bishop, +Michael Curry says, “If it’s not about love, it’s not about God.”

We have been baptized into the baptism of Jesus.  So what is next for us is what is next for the Kingdom of God on earth.  Our mission in that is to speak the love of God in Christ and to act out that love, toward God AND EVERY OTHER CHILD OF GOD (which naturally includes every person in the world).  

Now go out and change the world, one kind word and one act of love at a time.  In the name of one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.

[Epiphany 1B baptism sermon 010812, Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29, Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11]

The Rev. Canon John Bedingfield's sermon from January 3, 2021

This morning’s Gospel reading tells us a bit about St. Joseph.  We know very little about the adoptive (or “foster”) father of Jesus.  Throughout Jesus’ life, death and resurrection we read about Mary, but after the opening chapters of Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels, we never again hear anything about Joseph.  He is one of the lesser-known figures from the New Testament, but one to whom we should pay close attention.

We know from Matthew’s brief description of him that Joseph was a righteous man.  The word the Gospel writer uses here is the Greek, diakalos, which means “conforming to the standard, will, or character of God; upright, good; just, right; proper; ….”  That is a pretty good description of what we would consider a person of great faith.  

Joseph was also a religious and pious man.  Luke tells us that Joseph made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem every year for Passover – quite a trek to take every year.  We also know that he presented Jesus for circumcision at the Temple on his 8th day of life, as required by Mosaic law; and that as soon as Mary was ritually able to accompany him, he had Jesus at the Temple again.

Joseph had most of the attributes of “diakolos.”  However, what sets him apart from many other people with these attributes is that Joseph’s faith was a faith of action.  In all of the vignettes in which we glimpse Joseph from Matthew and Luke’s Gospels, we see a man on the move.  Repeatedly, God called and Joseph acted.

Here was a man, probably in what we would think of as the middle-class of Nazareth society, a carpenter and faithful member of the Synagogue.  He became engaged to the young woman named Mary and then discovered her secret.  As a man of action, he intended to quietly divorce her and send her away, but when an angel came to him in a dream and said, “Joseph.  It’s OK to marry her.  This is God’s child.”  Joseph went forward and married her.  

Then the baby was born in Bethlehem – after Joseph had to take the trek from Nazareth at the command of the Roman government – he was ready to take the family home when an angel of the Lord came again and told him to take them to Egypt instead.  Joseph must have barely begun to get accustomed to the fact that his son was actually God’s Son, when there was another angel telling him to face more upheaval in his life.  Now it’s one thing to make a trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem and leave the home and business for a few weeks.  But this time he had to go to Egypt for who knew how long.  Most of us would have questioned what would happen to the business.  What would happen to our belongings?  Where would the money come from to make the trip to Egypt?  How would we survive when we got there?  But not Joseph.  Matthew tells us that he simply gathered the family up and headed for Egypt, leaving everything he knew, owned and cared about behind, and became an unemployed refugee – all on the basis of another nocturnal visit from an angel.

Today’s Gospel account goes on to tell us that the family lived in Egypt until Herod died (a period of a few years by historical account) and then another visit from an angel and back to Nazareth they went.  And Joseph had probably just built up a nice carpentry business in Egypt when he got uprooted again.

So what can we take from these brief snapshots of Joseph?  As I said at the outset, he was a man of faith in action.  I would submit to you that Joseph is the preeminent example of how one should take a faith journey.

We are all on faith journeys.  Look around and think about the stories that the people around you have told you about their own journeys of faith.  Some appear to be so much further down the road than we do and some appear to be just finishing the packing before heading out the door.  But we are most assuredly all on the journey.  

Journeys of faith are never predictable – except for one thing; their unpredictability.  We never know when God is going to call, or what we are going to be called to do.  Our calls might be as simple as calling us to help out around the church, or as dramatic as a call to pursue ordained ministry.  Whenever God calls upon us and tells us that we need to make changes in our lives, it can make us afraid.  The future is uncertain enough without making life changes when we don’t know if we’re ready for it.  But God’s call is sufficient if we allow it to be.  And God will be there with us, providing spiritual and temporal support for us if we are faithful.

My own faith journey has been an incredible one thus far!  And through all of my own changes and chances, Joseph has been a great model of faith to me.  During all of Joseph’s encounters with the voice and will of God, he was never told “why.”  Nor was he ever given a timetable for when things would level out and become comfortable again.  Instead, he was told “what,” and that “what” was to get up and get moving.  “Be about the journey that God has set out for you.”  No matter how much Joseph – or we – want to know how and when things will turn out, each and every time, God finds it sufficient to simply issue the call, without more detailed information.

Perhaps one of the great lessons we are to learn on our journeys through life is that everything is temporary – both the good and the bad.  God does not call us to complete a story, but to add a chapter to it.  We are never called to a dead end, only to another fork in the road.

The spiritual life is all about journeying.  It is about keeping our eyes, ears, and most importantly, hearts open to listening for God’s call to us.  Unfortunately for most of us, those calls do not come, as they did for Joseph, in the crystal clear vision of angels in the night.  For us, it involves being quiet enough to hear that still, small voice inside.  But if we listen hard enough, and pay enough attention, we will get the message that we are to pick up our belongings – whether literally or figuratively – and get on the road to the next stop; not the destination, only the next temporary stop.  And when we get there, it is time to set up shop and begin to listen for the next set of instructions and to await the beginning of the next leg of the journey.

I am quite certain that Joseph never imagined what lay in store for him when he was originally approached with the idea of marrying the young virgin girl from Nazareth.  I know that when I was a twenty-one year old Air Force Sergeant, newly wed to the love of my life, in my wildest imagination I could not have conjured up where Donna and I would be today.  But that is the wonder, the mystery and the excitement of the faithful journey through life.

As you enter this new year, pay close attention to your own visiting angels – in whatever form they may take – and keep your senses tuned to the frequency of God, so that you don’t risk missing the next call to get up and head down the faith road, confident that while you don’t know exactly where the next fork leads, you do know that you are always journeying nearer to God – and that is what it is all about.  

In the name of the Incarnate God.  Amen.

[Christmas 2C Sermon, 010321,Jeremiah 31:7-14, Psalm 84, Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a, Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23]

The Rev. Canon John Bedingfield's sermon from December 27, 2020

  

 

 John Claypool, the Episcopal author and preacher extraordinaire, tells a wonderful story of a time, many years ago.  Claypool was in the middle of reading a book entitled, When God Became Man.  (This tells you how old the story is.  If this book were written today, it would most assuredly be titled, When God Became Human).  He and his wife were going out for the evening and had engaged the services of a woman they knew to come and baby sit.  As the babysitter arrived, Claypool laid his book down on the ottoman and got ready to leave.  When they arrived home several hours later, they found the babysitter in a state of incredible excitement, what today might be described as “bouncing off the walls.”  She immediately approached the Rev. Claypool, book in hand, and asked, “Is this real?  When did it happen?  Tell me all about it!”  Claypool described himself as somewhat dumbstruck.  He knew this woman to be a member of a mainline Christian church downtown and a member of the choir, as well as someone who worked on the church’s outreach projects.  It suddenly struck him after talking with the woman for over an hour that she had been a church-going person all her life and yet she had no idea what the Incarnation was, or what it meant.  This is proof positive of the old adage, there is no such thing as a stupid question, because we only know what we learn and retain.  This concept – the idea of God coming into the world as a human being – can be so difficult for us to get our minds around, that if we do not do it early on, we can spend a lifetime in the position the woman in the story was in; believing in Jesus without knowing for sure what she believed.

This morning’s reading – the prologue from John’s Gospel, does (to my way of thinking) the absolute best job of setting out the importance of the Incarnation for Christians.  What these first eighteen verses of the Fourth Gospel tell us is:  Jesus is completely God, God in every way – and Jesus was, from the time of the Nativity to the time of his crucifixion – completely human in every way.  That’s the most troubling aspect of the Incarnation for people, that Jesus could be fully God and fully human, AT THE SAME TIME.  That does not make sense to us, because we are bound by time, space and the laws of physics and mathematics.  But that does not make it any less true.

John begins the prologue with those familiar words, “In the beginning ….”  Those words are meant to take us back to the Genesis creation story, the start of both the Jewish and Christian Scriptures.  “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep ….”  John tells us the Word was around then.  Jesus, The Word was around before there was anything created by God.  Therefore, Jesus was NOT created by God – instead, Jesus was just as much God as God the Father was God and just as much involved in creation as was the Father.  John wants to make sure we don’t miss this point.  That is why he tells us the Word was with God and the Word WAS God, and all things came into being through Him.

Then the author of the fourth Gospel tells us the thing that people, including John Claypool’s babysitter, have been scratching their heads over for two thousand years:  “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.”  If you want to see how adamant John was about the true and complete humanity of Jesus, you need look no further than the original Greek, in which he said that the Word became  (sarx).  This is the lowest of all ways for Greeks to refer to human flesh.  It is sort of like referring to Jesus as a sack of meat.  John was clearly making the point that God, the creator of the universe, completely became the most common of humans.

God.  Became.  A.  Human.  Being.  Why would the only being with sufficient power to create everything that is, become so comparatively lowly a creature?  After all, God had always communicated with people.  In the Old Testament, there are countless examples of God speaking to individuals and showing God’s self to groups.  Look at Adam and Eve, Moses, Abraham, Noah, and all of the Prophets.  They all spoke directly to a God who spoke directly back.  Look at the children of Israel who witnessed God’s power at work in the parting of the Red Sea.  BUT, and this is a huge distinction, NEVER did any of them SEE the face of God.  Moses thought he would, but could not.  All of God’s chosen people hoped to, but never did.  That is one of the reasons that God became human, to put a face on God, thereby ushering in a new way of human beings relating to God.  

Just to be clear: God has ALWAYS understood humans.  Sometimes we have made God angry or sorrowful by what we have done, but we have never surprised God.  Humans though, never had a chance to know God on that same intimate level, until the Nativity, the Incarnation of God.  In Jesus, for the first time, we had the opportunity to see WWGD – What Would God Do? – if God were faced with the situations in which we find ourselves.  In Jesus, for the first time, we got to see the power of God, up close and personal, and under such control that we of limited human understanding could get it and not mistake it for a “natural phenomenon.”  Jesus stilled the storm, healed the sick, gave sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf – he even raised the dead – so that we might glimpse the power, the majesty, the glory, the mercy and the grace of the God who created us.

There is a story of a man who was born and raised in a large American city.  He had never been out of the urban environment in his life, when suddenly he got the chance to go on an African safari.  On his first night, lying in his sleeping bag, he heard a screeching sound that frightened him almost to death.  He asked his guide what the sound was.  The guide replied that it was a tree bear.  The man was somewhat comforted to know that this strange sound had a name, but not all that comforted.  The next day, the guide came into camp with a tree bear and the man got to look at it, touch it and observe that it was scared of him.  After that, he understood what a tree bear was and more about how it acted.  The experience changed his relationship to tree bears.  That is a shorthand version of the Incarnation.  God came among us as a human because God had always communicated with us, but we had never before known what God was like, enough so that we could better understand God.

In this Eucharist service we are about to recreate and celebrate one of the most important sacraments that Jesus gave us during his time as a person, sharing in the gifts of Christ’s body and blood, which nourish, sustain and bring us into everlasting life.   This is the other wonder of the Incarnation.  That God would become human and live the humble and meager existence of a 1st Century itinerate Jewish preacher, so that not only would people be able to better understand who and what God is, but also so that God could show us the ultimate gracious act of self-sacrifice through a particularly horrible death, so that we could be redeemed and be counted as ready to stand before the throne of Glory on the last day, sure and certain that our sins have been forgiven and forgotten through the sacrifice of the Incarnate God.  

In the name of the God who became human to heal, teach, and redeem us.  Amen.

[Christmas 1 122720 John 1:1-18]